My daughter's public school in Indiana is having "Hawaiian Day" today. That's offensive, isn't it?
My daughter's public school in Indiana is having "Hawaiian Day" today. That's offensive, isn't it?
I dropped her off this morning and saw girls (and boys) wearing grass skirts, some of them with coconut bras too. I'm not sure what else is going on, but it doesn't seem very respectful of a native culture that we have seriously fucked over. Would they have a "Native American Day" and let kids come in wearing feathered headdresses?
Or am I reading too much into it?
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I don't think there's anything wrong with a Hawaiian day in the abstract - schools often do dumb little celebrations like that. In context, though, coconut bras? Y I K E S.
My schools, when I was a wee lad in the 2000s, did a lot of 'theme' days like that about different cultures, and while it was generally very surface-level information, it also was generally accurate and not whitewashing. I don't see anything inherently wrong with encouraging student participation in learning like that, even if it might be a bit cringey and superficial.
We had spirit week growing up which was a different theme every day leading up to homecoming. Entirely voluntary participation and students came up with their own costumes so the coconut bras to me are something those students came up with, though as a parent I’d make sure it’s was only decoration and a proper bra was still worn underneath the shirt.
I would think coconut bras would be inappropriate because they're school-age children and because coconut bras are not actually a thing. They're tourist fetishization of Hawaii.